[OPEN] FRIGHTENING FESTIVITIES

[heirring]

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Celebrating a totally 100% legit wedding.
WHEN: Summerday
WHERE: Edlingham Hall, the Vinmark Foothills
NOTES: cw: Spectral Violence and Ghostly Gore; if you don't want to deal with the spooky ghost adventure half of the evening, feel free to say your character went back to Kirkwall early rather than staying the night.

PARTY;

A few hours' journey from Kirkwall, the great old shape of the house known as Edlingham Hall rises up from out of the Vinmark foothills. In the decades (ages?) since it's abandonment, what must have once been a very imposing stone structure built in the mountain's shadow has given way to age and the elements. What remains is unequivocally a ruin, albeit a stunningly elaborate one. It's a place of columns and alcoves, gutted passages and weather worn stairs leading to the skeletal remains of old towers and chambers, with everything turned to varying shades of brown and green and as it's been grown over or into by the surrounding landscape. There's hardly a roof remaining to be found in the whole of the place.

Luckily, this particular party doesn't require one. In what might have once been the titular hall, a series of tables and benches (borrowed from the Gallows, thank you very much) have been set up around a stretch of cracked tiles which has been more or less cleared for dancing and everything has been lit amply by a collection of merrily burning braziers.

Party-goers will be treated to a host of entertainment, included but not limited to: at least one speech (thank you, Provost Stark), a half dozen toasts, a rather impressive spread of Orlesian-styled cuisine (no doubt prepared by someone devastated to be expected to do so under such rugged conditions), quite a bit of rather good wine, music, dancing, and a few more avant garde Rifter-influenced party games including a vaguely wyvern-shaped pinata and some heinous game called Snap-Dragon.

And if none of that sounds like a good time, then there are ruins to explore, discreet alcoves to investigate, and a campground pitched in the ruin's shadow where one might retire early from the party with only a stock level of scorn.

AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT;

An eerie mist begins to stream from the cracked tiles of the dance floor. Riftwatch does not count a fog mage among their midst. Was one perhaps hired? Is this a trick of some science? A peculiar feature of the weather in this region? Such murmurs begin to circulate as the mist continues to thicken, and rise, and sour to a sickly pale yellow. It clashes with the decorations. Its touch seems to wither the impossibly sumptuous meal, curdling cream fillings and souring fine meats.

And then the screaming starts.

In the stone frame of an upper window, see her: a woman, in a long pale gown, with a horrible wound around her neck. Her slippers peep over the sill. Blood begins to drip down her front as her mouth opens, and opens, and opens, until her jaw rests upon her bloody chest.

Guests seated at the table will feel some creature bumping against their legs--something big, and solid, and hot, and hairy. When they pull away in horror, they will find nothing at all beneath the table. But the growling will not stop, nor will the crunching of teeth on bone.

The twisted figure of a man rises from a pile of tumble-down stone. His limbs hang at loose and unnerving angles. One arm has been crushed and droops down too low, brushing at his warped knee. His face is a mask of pain, and his left eye bulges as if ready to burst. Pressure has thrust his circlet of gold low on his brow, cinching his balding head. He shuffles toward the party, reaching with his ruined hands for human flesh. Or perhaps a cup of wine.

A headless body comes running out from the rotting main keep. It is wearing armor but is otherwise without identity. From its stump of a neck sprays a great geyser of blood, spatting party-goers and the ground and the food and whatever else is in its way. Its graying hands are reaching, but without a head, its path is random and monstrous, trampling over anything and anyone without regard. Or it would, if it weren’t spectral.

The ghosts must be stopped. Find the source of the haunting or this marriage will be ruined.

Those not interested in tracking down the source of the haunting will soon discover that the fog which has wreathed Edlingham Hall has become quite impenetrable. Attempting to escape the grounds will result in being impossibly turned around and eventually spit any would-be escapee back into the ruin. Solving the mystery may be optional, but experiencing the haunting by the aforementioned ghosts (and any other thematically appropriately specters your heart might desire for the convenience of creeping out your characters) apparently isn't.

Comments

[kantikoy]

In favor of not showing the surprise she feels on her face, Adrasteia takes another sip of her wine as well. They were told that closing it had been attempted, and wouldn't work; Adrasteia has only one theory, and she's not certain it's worth sharing just yet.

However.

She decides to drain the wineglass. "I suspect whoever tries to close it needs a connection not only with the Fade but with the nature of the rift itself, which has been corrupted, as we know, in order to be successful." Her glass is now empty; she sets it down on a table behind her. "But it's only theory."

So. A Warden, is her point.

[heirring]

"Oooh," is like the Ooo of admiring something particularly shiny.

"Now there is a compelling suggestion. Oh,"--She frowns then, a fine wrinkle forming between her pale brows--"But I don't believe any of the Wardens in Riftwatch's company have an anchor. Could you perhaps convert someone who does into the Order?"

Convert? Recruit? Something along those lines.

[kantikoy]

Adrasteia shakes her head, quickly and firmly. "No, the risk is too great." The likelihood that whomever it is might just die as a result of the Joining is very high, in her opinion. "It would make more sense for a Warden who is already here to attempt at obtaining their own anchor."

Time for a new glass of wine? Yes.

[heirring]

There is a version of reality where Wysteria latches on to that first point and presses it. 'The risk? What risks are there?' But in this one, her attention already so firmly pointed in the direction of rift and anchors and rifters and gates and so on that she (mercifully?) hooks into this second point and doesn't look back to consider what dangling threads she's left behind her.

"Oh, but that's would be rather dangerous. The anchor is quite deadly, you know. Eventually it will poison the person who bears it."

[kantikoy]

Adrasteia considers it mercy from on high, actually, that Wysteria doesn't ask more questions about the risks posed to one attempting to enter the Grey Wardens. She'd rather not have to attempt to lie her way around that particular secret of the order.

As it is, the second glass of wine for this conversation. A sip. A nod. "How long is eventually?" Like she hasn't already been blood poisoned, for lack of better framing. Her idea of eventually gaining an anchor of her own is becoming more solidified by the moment.

[heirring]

"I don't know that we know for certain, although it would seem to be rather contingent on its location. To my knowledge, the only record of someone in Riftwatch dying from it was a young lady who has the misfortune to have the anchor in her chest."

Is that right? She read the report so long ago.

"Provost Baudin and Madame de Cedoux and Lady Baudin and myself have all had ours for a number of years without incident, though I suppose that could change at any moment. However, I think it would be very important that the thing place itself in some extremity so that it might be amputated should its growth in your person become too advanced."

[kantikoy]

"That's not so bad," she says honestly, looking more at her glass than at Wysteria. "Eventually, certainly, it will become a problem, but you've been here, what... two years, you'd said? And to lose a hand is not an impossible thing when all is said and done."

So. She'll have to put herself out in the field sometime there is a tear in the Fade to seal, and see about getting an anchor shard all of her own.

Just not in the chest, apparently.

[heirring]

"I suppose not but—"

But.

"But it does seem prudent to perhaps put out a sort of call first, does it not? To see if there are any Wardens who have an anchor already who have yet to reach Kirkwall, perhaps? It seems a rather dreadful thing to commit yourself to if there is an alternative. Not that I don't admire your nerve of course, Adrasteia. It is a very noble idea."

[kantikoy]

"Perhaps," Adrasteia admits, but she and Vance already discussed this, and she and Ellis to a lesser extent. She's certain of her path, Wysteria, and nothing is going to stop her once she's set herself to it. Fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be.

"We'll see how it all shakes out." Drinking wine? Drinking wine.

wraps this, y/n?

[heirring]

"Fair enough. Perhaps tomorrow some dashing colleague of yours will turn up with an anchor in hand and all will be happily resolved. Particularly given that the rate of catching one - of receiving an anchor, I mean - seems to be entirely random. Why, Mister Ellis has been near dozens of rifts and has yet to be afflicted yet Mister Artemaeus has acquired one. I can hardly believe he has spent more time in the company of rifts than the former. But I can't say I've ever consulted him on the subject, either. I only remember that he didn't have it while laid up after Ghislain. You would have to ask him about it."

It seems unlikely that she realizes she has just given Adrasteia the name of at least one specialist when it comes to the subject of cramming an anchor into her person, particularly given that Wysteria moves happily and briskly from the one subject back to--

"Now, I read in your report that you found a dwarven chest in the room with the rift. When we return to the Gallows tomorrow, we ought to examine everything you and your party returned with. I should very much like to make a few drawings for my own reference. I have been studying dwarven rune forms, you see, and I wonder if there is anything like them on this chest. Did you see the pyramid which Project Sashamiri recovered from Orlais? Sister Sara thought it might also have some connection to the dwarves, and--"

So on and so forth, pouring out of her in a great chattering torrent of information and questions for which Wysteria requires little answer. If nothing else, there can hardly be a better companion for someone who might wish to sip their wine and avoid awkward potentially awkward inquiries for she rarely stays married to any particular line of investigation for long.

yes!

[kantikoy]

For her part, Adrasteia keeps in mind the names that Wysteria gives her, and engages in the rest of the conversation fairly easily, given the wine.

She isn't going to give up on obtaining an anchor shard of her own. Depending on the mysteries of fate to handle the problem of the rift within the Temple of Dumat is not in her at this point.